Family Life Southern

This story of a young woman's confrontation with death and her past is a poetic study of human relations.

At thirty-two, Jillian Parrish finally finds the courage to put herself in the driver’s seat of her life. Pregnant and recently divorced, she and her seven-year-old daughter find refuge and solace on Pawleys Island, South Carolina—Jillian’s only source of happy childhood memories. Summers spent at her grandmother’s beach house had been Jillian’s sanctuary from indifferent parents—until her best friend Lauren Mills disappeared, never to be found.

Hilton Head, a South Carolina retirement heaven - at least it's supposed to be, but for Big Al and Connie Russo, the move from New Jersey to this Southern paradise has been fraught with just a few complications. Especially for their daughter, Grace. Well, that's what she likes to be called. Her family insists on Maria Graziella. Seriously, enough with the Neapolitan. That might have been okay in New Jersey, but now it's just plain silly, and Grace, at 32 is - horror of horrors - still unmarried.

For Dana, what should be the happiest day of her life becomes the day her world falls apart. Her daughter is born beautiful and healthy, but no one can help noticing the African-American traits in her appearance. Dana's husband, to her great shock and dismay, begins to worry that people will think she has had an affair. Now Dana has to track down the father she never knew and explore the possibility of African-American lineage in his family history.

Acclaimed novelist Anne Rivers Siddons's new novel is a stunning tale of love and loss. For as long as she can remember, they were Cam and Lilly--happily married, totally in love with each other, parents of a beautiful family, and partners in life. Then, after decades of marriage, it ended as...

In the Deep South, where love and hatred run deep and close, dissension often summers just beneath the surface. When a family gathers for a funeral as its old homestead above the waters of Mobile Bay, it must carry out the last wish of the aunt and sister whom it has come to mourn. It is a wish that will unearth a terrible secret, one that will either tear her siblings and their offspring apart or allow them to accept buried memories, wounds, and love.

Sara King has nothing, save for her secrets and the baby in her belly, as she boards the bus to Memphis, hoping to outrun her past in Chicago. She is welcomed with open arms by Mama Sugar, a kindly matriarch and owner of the popular boardinghouse The Scarlet Poplar. Like many cities in early 1960s America, Memphis is still segregated, but change is in the air. News spreads of the Freedom Riders. Across the country, people like Martin Luther King Jr. are leading the fight for equal rights.

Acclaimed romance author Katie Lane inspires listeners to believe in true love. When Faith Aldridge learns she has a twin sister, she treks to Bramble, Texas, to find her. But Bramble’s residents think Faith is her sister, Hope, and they take action to reunite Faith with Hope’s ex-flame, Slate. When the real Hope finally shows up, Faith pulls out all the stops to hold onto her newfound passion.

After their father dies in a tragic accident, heiresses Evelyn, Georgia and Olivia Belle are left with a massive hole in their finances. With the world's media and National Crime Agency looking on, their family home, cars, and other assets are sold at auction, leaving the sisters penniless, homeless, and jobless. Shunned by their celebrity friends, the sisters must learn to fend for themselves for the first time in their lives.

An outstanding primary source of Southern life during the Yankee blockade, the book is a memoir of daily life on a Southern plantation during the Civil War. The narrative provides details on a wide spectrum of issues of historical interest.

In Beneath The Willow Tree, the eighth book in the South Carolina Sunsets series, listeners are introduced to two women who have inherited a beachfront home in Seagrove. These two women were raised by the same foster mother but despised each other. The twist is that the foster mother's will states that the two women must work together and use the home for a good cause to inherit it. They must then decide whether to keep the home and live there together or sell it and split the proceeds.

After a series of devastating losses, Chicago journalist Hannah Williamson has landed in Senatobia, Mississippi, to care for her bedridden grandmother and endure grunt work at a small newspaper. But in cleaning out its archives, Hannah discovers a compelling distraction from her life: a series of rejected articles from the 1930s that illuminate a long-hidden mystery.

It's November 1, 1961, in a small town in South Carolina, and nuclear war is coming. Ten-year-old Wilson Porter believes this with every fiber of his being. He prowls his neighborhood for Communists and studies fallout pamphlets and the habits of his father, a scientist at the nuclear plant in town. Meanwhile, his mother Nellie covertly joins an anti-nuclear movement led by angry housewives-and his father, Dean, must decide what to do with the damning secrets he's uncovered at the nuclear plant. When tragedy strikes, the Porter family must learn to confront their fears.

Jesse Few peddles lies. His boss and clients order a couple. His married girlfriend gets a few. His family buys several. But he saves the top-of-the-line dishonesty to sell to himself. The 49-year-old suburban rogue focuses on carousing with his golf buddies, chasing women much too young for him, and surviving the Great Recession that’s raging across the South like it's the Big Banks March to the Sea.

For twelve-year-old Martha "Sonny" Creech, there is no place more beautiful than her family's cotton farm. She, her two brothers, and her parents work hard on their land - hoeing, planting, picking - but only Sonny loves the rich, dark earth the way her father does. When a tragic accident claims his life, her stricken family struggles to fend off ruin - until their rich, reclusive neighbor offers to help finance that year's cotton crop.

Thirteen years ago, Jori Trahan’s boyfriend vanished without a trace. Now, after moving back home to Alabama to care for her ailing grandmother and autistic brother, she comes face-to-face with the deadly mystery behind his disappearance. Jori has a rare form of synesthesia, meaning she can “hear” colors; to her, tones of voice are as unique as fingerprints. With the help of this ability and a sympathetic cop, Jori comes dangerously close to uncovering the truth. But those responsible will go to any length - including murder - to keep their dark secrets buried.

In 1961 Charlotte, North Carolina, the predominantly black neighborhood of Brooklyn is a bustling city within a city. Self-contained and vibrant, it has its own restaurants, schools, theaters, churches, and night clubs. There are shotgun shacks and poverty, along with well-maintained houses like the one Loraylee Hawkins shares with her young son, Hawk, her Uncle Ray, and her grandmother, Bibi. Loraylee's love for Archibald Griffin, Hawk's white father and manager of the cafeteria where she works, must be kept secret in the segregated South.

When a black boy named Paris saves Trudy from being crushed by a runaway Sunbeam Bread truck, they become friends. Navigating a multi-racial friendship in 1964 is no easy thing, however. The racism they encounter inspires them to go on an audacious adventure: to take down the Confederate flag that flies atop the South Carolina State House. And they can't do it without the help of Trudy's grandmother, Ida.

In 1989, Jodi McCarty is 17 years old when she's sentenced to life in prison. When she's released 18 years later, she finds herself at a Greyhound bus stop, reeling from the shock of unexpected freedom but determined to chart a better course for herself. Not yet able to return to her lost home in the Appalachian Mountains, she heads south in search of someone she left behind, as a way of finally making amends. There, she meets and falls in love with Miranda, a troubled young mother living in a motel room with her children. Together they head toward what they hope will be a fresh start.

Ten-year-old Comfort Snowberger has attended 247 funerals. But that's not surprising, considering that her family runs the town funeral home. And even though Great-uncle Edisto keeled over with a heart attack and Great-great-aunt Florentine dropped dead, just like that, six months later, Comfort knows how to deal with loss, or so she thinks.